The Protector
by rittenden
Summary: Post-ep for 'The OG' (2.12). Don's thoughts after the house was empty. Oneshot. Originally posted at the Numb3rs Fanrush site.


**The Protector**

_So small… such a waste…_

Don Eppes gazed silently at the picture in his hand. A little girl – probably not even a year old. An innocent victim in a war that would never end…

He sighed as he set the photo down and picked up another. A boy this time. About fourteen or fifteen. _Just like…_ He let the thought slip away. No point in going there again. Shaking his head sadly, Don allowed the snapshot to slip through his fingers and settle gently onto the stack of images his brother had printed out. He thought he knew why Charlie had done it – the mathematician always was a tactile person – but having these here, right where you could see them… that was disconcerting. Don knew his brother was no baby – he didn't need to be coddled and protected – but a part of him still felt Charlie shouldn't see this. He'd always been his brother's guardian and it was a hard habit to break.

Fatigue crowded in on him and Don picked up the stack of photos before moving to the sofa behind him. Stretching out on the cushions, he dropped the pile onto his stomach and leafed through them idly. _Boy, boy, girl… another boy…_

Children, all of them. Even the ones who looked as though they'd just as soon sell their grandmothers as look at them were only in their mid to late teens. _No… there's one who must've been twenty or so…_

Don sipped his beer, not really seeing the pictures any more. He'd begun to sort them into separate piles – male, twelve and under… female, thirteen and older… Once he realized what he was doing he growled wordlessly and shuffled them back together. Standing abruptly, Don replaced the photos on the table and went back to the couch.

_"If you weren't such a hardass…" "I can't be as detached as you…"_ His father and brother's words echoed through Don's head and he quickly polished off his beer. Staying behind when the two men had gone out was a bad idea, it seemed. Thinking wasn't at the top of his 'to-do' list tonight. He should have just gone home… gone out… gone, gone, gone…

Don got to his feet, fully intending to leave, but when he'd put away the empty bottle he found another full one in his hand, condensation beading on the glass from its abrupt departure from the refrigerator shelf into the early evening warmth. Shrugging slightly, he took two more from the fridge and resigned himself to sleeping on the couch tonight. Don tucked the bottles into the crook of his elbow and went back to the table in the garage.

Something about those pictures pulled at him. He wondered absentmindedly if this was what pigeons felt like when they'd finally stopped circling and headed for home. Or migrating birds – that might be more like it. Something about where they'd been just kept drawing them back, season after season…  
No. This was like staring at a wreck. You didn't want to look, but you couldn't _not_ look. Don didn't quite understand it – he'd seen victims' photos before…

He'd always studied the pictures dispassionately. _Here's one… here's another…_ Like when he'd sorted these out into piles – clinical, logical classification. The images weren't representations of _people_, they were evidence, statistics… numbers.

Don sighed. Damn Charlie anyway._ "Everything is numbers."_ What gave him the right to be… _right_… all the time? Why couldn't the curly-haired twerp be wrong once in a while? It wasn't human…

He dropped onto the sofa cushions with a snort. Not human – that was rich. The pot calling the kettle black, for sure. _"You bet I'm detached. I have to be."_ His own words ricocheted through his memory, leaving gaping holes in their wake. He settled back, his head on the armrest, not really surprised to find he'd brought the photos with him again.

Setting two of the bottles on the floor Don took a deep pull from the third. If he was going to look at these pictures, then he was going to do it the right way. These weren't paintings or drawings or clever computer manipulations – someone took a picture of a person, and this time he was going to see them as such.

He picked up the top one and stared at it again. A little girl… probably not even a year old. _Been there, done that. Next?_ Don flipped it over, startled to see his brother's familiar scrawl: Brittany Lealer – age 8.5 months. He felt a fleeting moment of satisfaction – he'd guessed her age right, anyway – before turning it over again and staring at the image.

_Did she have her mother's eyes? Her father's nose? Who had put the bows in her hair? Did she fuss about it, or did she giggle and fidget as the ribbons were tied?_ Don felt a weight press down on his chest and took a large swallow of his drink to ease it. _What did the photographer use to make her smile like that? Was it a rubber duck? A puppet? Her favorite toy? What __was__ her favorite toy, anyway?_

He finished off the bottle and reached for the next one, not noticing when the other pictures cascaded from his lap to the floor. As he swallowed another mouthful, Don felt his body relax and his thoughts turned inward again. _Where was she when it happened? Was her mother or father nearby? Did they see it? Did they hear her __scream__ when the bullet tore into her small body? Or did she just fall to the ground, silently?_

_Oh, God. _He drank half the beer in the bottle. _This has got to stop._ But he knew it wouldn't. He'd been here before – done this before – and he knew it wouldn't stop until he'd asked all the questions he could think of or passed out, whichever came first. His father didn't keep enough beer in the house to reach the passing out stage, which meant Don was in for the long haul.

Almost automatically his eyes went back to the photograph. _Could she talk? Had she started to, before she died? Before some stupid kid with an axe to grind dating back from who knew when decided to pull a trigger without learning how to shoot first? _Firing from a standstill and hitting your target was hard enough, Don knew. Firing from a moving vehicle was damn near impossible.

_What about her parents? Who were they? What did they do for a living? What were they doing now? Were they still together, or did this senseless tragedy pull them apart? Did they have other children? Were __they__ alive?_

On to the third bottle. _What did they dream for their little girl? What did they hope for her? Long life and happiness, probably. __That__ sure as hell didn't work out…_ He wondered exactly how much beer his dad actually had in the house. The tightness in his chest was getting harder to drive away now.

Don stood a little unsteadily and picked up the bottles. Shuffling through to the kitchen, he paused to drop the empties into the case in the closet before heading back to the fridge. Eight more. That meant that either Charlie or his dad had had one. No. He'd had the other one. Sometimes he wished he could just let go. Playing your emotional cards so close had its drawbacks, though. He knew people in his line of work that could never let go, and they burned out. Don didn't want to burn out. He was good at his job – damn good – and he wasn't going to throw it all away over something as simple as a self-control issue. No way. Not him.

_Then why am I standing here with the fridge open, counting beer bottles?_ He slammed it shut defiantly. _Four. I had four. Too many to get me home, not enough to get me where I need to be._ Sighing, Don opened the door again and took out two more bottles. _I'll replace them tomorrow._

He didn't go back to the garage this time. Brittany Lealer's photograph was right in front of him now – Don didn't need to look at the printout any more. She was there, in his head. He briefly considered the couch in the living room, but dismissed it as being too open… too vulnerable. He headed for the staircase instead.

Alan had kept his old room – the things he'd had in it that made it his were long gone, of course – but Don moved past it to the door at the end of the hallway. Taking a deep breath, he twisted the knob and stepped inside the solarium. This was where his mother used to come when she needed time to herself. He wondered momentarily why she didn't go out more, but dismissed the thought immediately. The answer probably had something to do with his brother, and he didn't want to think about Charlie right now. Now wasn't the time for his personal demons. Now was the time for the victims – for Brittany.

Don lowered himself onto the settee and gazed out the darkened windows. He hadn't bothered to turn on the lights, preferring instead to let the darkness stand testament to his mood. Rain glittered on the windows and Don remembered a conversation he'd once had with his mother about it. He'd only been about four – strange, the things one could dredge up if they thought about it – and he'd asked where the rain came from.

_"Rain is God's tears, Donny," his mother had replied. "He's crying for all the lost souls."_

_"Why are they lost, Mommy?"_

_She had leaned down at that point and held his face gently in her hands. "Because, sweetheart," she'd answered softly. "Sometimes – no matter how hard He tries, no matter what He does – sometimes it just isn't enough." She'd sighed then. "Not everyone can be saved, baby."_

The memory faded and Don wondered at what point he'd opened the next bottle. Taking a large swallow, he stared out the windows. _Not everyone can be saved…_ Don tried. It wasn't as though he had delusions of grandeur or anything like that. He didn't think for a moment he could pick up the slack. He just did the best he could with what he had and hoped it made a difference.

_Until the next drive-by shooting. The next error in judgment… the next drunk driver, psychopath, rapist, whatever._ The unfortunate truth about his job was – Don couldn't do anything until after the fact. There had to be a crime before he could solve anything. Brittany died because of a turf war or something similar, but no one could have saved her from it. It had to happen before the police could do anything. Don smiled grimly. He was sure there was an opening in there somewhere for Larry. The diminutive physicist would jump at the chance to comment on alternate realities and paradoxical situations. He should've paid more attention in science class…

Don shook his head to clear away that train of thought and brought up the little girl's picture again. It was easy to do – just like he thought it would be. His mind was carefully trained to remember details, and recalling a face was as easy as recalling his name. Don Eppes, special agent for the FBI. Sounded important. Not as fancy as Charles Eppes, B.S., PhD, maybe, but important nonetheless.

Charlie again. What was it about him that always brought Don back to his little brother? He thought for a moment, trying to envision what Megan would say. _"You have a guardian complex, Don. Both for the people you're trying to help and for your family. It's only natural that your thoughts should turn to your brother at a time like this."_

Brother, father, sister, mother… Brittany's face appeared before him in the gloom, and Don wondered when it would go away now. He could recall the other photos he'd looked at as well and flirted with the idea of going back to the garage to get them. Charlie had probably written on the backs of those printouts too. More faces, more names, more senseless deaths…

_What had she been doing when she died? Was she at the playground? In a park? In her yard?_ Eight and a half months wasn't old enough for walking, he figured. She would have been sitting… or crawling… Don pictured her crawling across her front lawn toward her mother's outstretched arms and the bands around his chest clamped down viciously. Suddenly Don couldn't breathe – couldn't move – and he gasped for air as though drowning. His lungs burned as he tried to draw air into his lungs and the fact that he didn't seem able to scared him.

Don reached out and set the beer bottle onto the end table, clutching his chest with his other hand. He'd been here before, too. At the point where the tension turned into anxiety and threatened to suffocate him. He knew he had one of two options: give in, or turn on a light. Somehow having a light on always helped in this situation. Back in his apartment Don would have had his television remote on the cushion beside him. One press of a button and he'd be able to breathe again…

Cursing his decision to sit in the solarium, Don fumbled for the switch on the lamp. He twisted it sharply and was horrified when it didn't come on. _Burnt bulb – dammit, Charlie! Some homeowner you turned out to be._ Don leaned across the settee, reaching for the standing lamp nearby. _Too far… can't breathe…_

Without warning, the overhead light switched on. Don gasped in the sudden illumination and turned toward the doorway to find his father standing there.

"Everything okay, Don?"

He gulped in a lungful of air and nodded.

Alan frowned. "Are you sure?" he pressed. "Why are you sitting up here in the dark?"

"Just…" Don realized his hand was still clutching the front of his shirt and he started scratching as though that was the original purpose for it being there. "Just wanted some time to think, Dad."

"Oh." Alan thought for a second. "You want me to turn the light off again?"

"No!" He forced himself to calm down. The danger was past now. "No… thanks, but I think I'd rather have it on."

His father nodded. "Well," he said finally. "I think I'm going to head for bed. You staying?"

Don pushed himself off the settee and turned to face Alan, still scratching at the nonexistent itch on his chest. "Yeah, I think so. I've had a few too many to drive home tonight."

"You've always been the sensible one, Don," his father replied fondly. "Always trying to do the right thing." He smiled and turned away. "You know where everything is," he called over his shoulder. "Have a good sleep."

"Yeah – you too, Dad," Don called back. When his father's door had shut, Don blew out a breath and scrubbed a hand through his short, dark hair. He glanced around the room once before turning off the light and heading for his old room.

_"Always trying to do the right thing…"_ Don turned down the covers and quickly undressed, sliding between the cool sheets. One more thought wormed its way into Don's mind before he drifted off to sleep.

_Even if it kills me._


End file.
